


Weep No More

by springburn



Series: Random musings from The Capaldi character file. [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Fortysomething, fandom crossover - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love Stories, New Beginnings, Past Relationship(s), Peter Capaldi character file
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5080804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springburn/pseuds/springburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronnie Pilfrey is sitting in the coffee shop, reflecting on his life......</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weep No More

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story for Children in Need night which is coming up next month. 
> 
> Peter visited projects in Malawi last year, and movingly told the plight of the people there. 
> 
> Clara and Ronnie.......what a great pairing!!

WEEP NO MORE.

He sipped his coffee and savoured the taste.  
The window seat, looking out, watching the passers by.  
Such a Happy Pilfrey.

Twas not always thus.  
Damn his Practice partner, Paul Slippery......smug bastard.  
And damn that family of his.....those wretched boys.  
Oh, he was sure they'd all had a good laugh, at his expense.  
The tricks they'd played on him....well, especially that Edwin.  
What a fool he'd made of himself, how they must have enjoyed it.

First the emails, then the NHS Surgery Inspection.  
What a bloody mess.  
He'd fallen for it all.  
In love and gullible.  
Yes! He had loved Estelle.  
His Practice partner's wife.  
What did Paul know about how to love a woman like her?  
No idea on which side his bread was buttered.

Back in the day, Ronald Evershaw Pilfrey had been popular with the ladies.  
When he was tall and rangy, all flowing chestnut locks and expressive eyebrows.  
A little bit dangerous, a bit off the wall.  
Musical, artistic.  
Heads turned when he walked the walk, down the hospital ward, white coat flying, stethoscope artfully placed around his neck.  
Those days were gone.  
Now he was just a bloody joke.  
The butt of a stupid prank by a sixteen year old prick.

 

oOo

Depression.  
Plunged low.  
Such a solitary life.  
What a waste for someone so giving.....  
And Pilfrey was a giving man........very giving.

Then suddenly just as quickly as his life had plunged into despair, everything changed.  
In the blink of an eye.  
The girl in the coffee shop.....lovely.....he'd thought her.  
Petite, pretty.  
Beautiful brown eyes, open and expressive.  
He'd noticed her straight away, she'd flashed him a smile.  
He blushed.  
The fickle finger of fate.  
That's what it was, no other explanation.  
That she should choke on her biscotti.  
Right there in front of him, and he'd rushed to the rescue, his best Mrs Doubtfire impression, the Heimlich manoeuvre, without a second thought.  
Arms around her, under her armpits, clasped hands in front of her chest, squeeze and lift, with a jerk....and out it came, across the floor.  
As the other customers gathered round in startled awe.  
Her eyes opening, looking up into his face.  
"My hero!" She whispered, with a ghost of a smile.  
He thought he would die of sheer happiness. 

She'd asked his name, told him hers,  
"Clara.....Clara Oswald!"  
She'd given him her number, written it on the back of his hand, in biro.  
"Give me a call Ronnie.....I owe you.......one life......"  
Then she was gone, with a toss of her hair, and a wave of her hand.

oOo

So he called her.  
The following week.  
Picked her up in his car, took her out for lunch.  
"Nice motor, Ronnie," she said, "does it go fast?"  
He'd shown her, on the open road, put his foot down......yes, he showed off.....just a tiny bit.  
But she loved it, she said.  
Loved speed, loved danger.  
A teacher, she told him....English. Secondary School.  
"I've been travelling, for some while. But that's over now. Finished. You remind me of my companion, it's the accent. The accent and the quirkiness......and you're a Doctor.....how weird is that? And you know what Ronnie?.....you'll look really sexy when you go grey."  
She told him this, laughing.  
"Not your boyfriend then? This 'companion'?"  
"No......not my boyfriend. I loved him, but, well.....he was....he was.....not of this world.......so it was never going to work out really. Anyway, he's moved on. Pastures new. And it's time I did the same."  
She sighed, gave a far away look, a tinge of sadness, of melancholy.  
"So.....I'm your rebound then, am I?"  
He couldn't help it.  
It had to be said.  
What else could it be?  
"No, Ronnie, absolutely not. I'm not that sort of girl. I loved The Doctor very much, but I wasn't IN LOVE with him, it wasn't like that. But we were best friends, and I miss him."  
"The Doctor?"  
"Yes......that's what he calls himself. Like I said.....quirky!"  
"I'm older than you.....more than ten years I'm guessing.......so why me?"  
"You saved my life! That's a start, isn't it? Trust me Ronnie.....age is merely a number, and you look just fine to me!" 

So he'd carried on meeting her, poor indigent fool that he was, informally at first, not really dates, more 'just seeing'.  
They had fun, they laughed.  
One day he sang her the whole of 'Michelle' by the Beatles.......and several choruses of 'Summer Holiday'........in the car, on their way to the seaside, on a little jaunt, in the holidays.  
"You have a lovely voice Ronnie......do you play an instrument?"  
"Guitar. I noodle.....that's all."  
"I'd like to hear you play one day."

 

oOo

First time she'd come to his place, he cooked dinner, lit candles.......lots of candles.  
"Come into my parlour!"  
"Blimey, it's like a chapel in here.....are we going to pray?"  
"I thought it would add ambiance, be romantic."  
She smiled, touched his face with her hand, brushing his cheek.  
"You're trying too hard Ronnie, and you don't have to. Let's eat shall we?"  
That evening was the first time she let him kiss her.  
Tentative at first, but she'd gone for it.....really gone for it, pulled him in, her mouth against his hungrily.  
When they separated, she was breathless.  
"Wow.....Ronnie! You have hidden depths. Who'd a thunk? Ronnie Pilfrey, probably the best kisser I've ever experienced! And that's saying something!"  
"Really?" He coloured visibly, suddenly shy.  
"You weren't kidding when you said you were very giving! Is there more where that came from?"  
She laughed, was she mocking him?  
"Clara?"  
"What is it?"  
"You're not taking me for a fool are you? Only I'm rather enamoured here, and if you're stringing me along, I'd like to know......"  
She regarded him, with an air of pity, tempered with genuine affection.  
"Ronnie......I'll prove to you that I'm not messing with you.......take me to bed......show me just how giving you really are."  
And he did, almost pathetically eager to please, but oh so accomplished.  
So grateful she'd consented to be there, so keen and enthusiastic.  
He was experienced......he was good......God! But he knew what he was doing.  
Oh, he played her like an instrument, bought her to orgasm with those clever fingers of his, in moments, she hardly even managed to undo her dress.  
Then he demonstrated that his mouth was as skilled as his hands, had her writhing at the touch of his tongue, crying out, calling his name.  
Finally when he made love to her, and she came a third time, that cock of his, so amazing, so perfect, so bloody satisfying......Jesus!  
Yes! Ronnie Pilfrey was certainly very giving, no doubt of that.  
No doubt at all. 

 

oOo

 

"Ronnie?"  
"Yes, Clara."  
They were laying together, in Clara's bed, at her flat.....a Sunday afternoon assignation.  
"Have you ever felt like you don't really belong anywhere. That you don't quite fit?"  
"Ha! All the time. Everyday when I go to work, in that bloody surgery!"  
"I'd like to run away. Go somewhere completely new, where no one knows me, start again."  
"Goodness, that's drastic isn't it? What about your family? People who love you. What about me?"  
"I meant with you, you idiot. You and me together.....just go off somewhere exciting! What do you think?"  
"I think you're completely barking! What would we do for money? Where would we go?"  
She sighed.  
"I don't know. Anywhere that's not Coal Hill, and all its memories, every single day. I'm tired of it Ronnie. I want to leave it all behind."  
"Clara....you can't run away from your problems......trust me, I know.....I've tried."  
"Really? What happened?"  
"Falling in love with my partner's wife is what happened. Making a complete idiot of myself."  
"And you didn't leave?"  
"No......they did, in the end, moved to Cornwall. To save their marriage.....it worked, as it happens!"  
"So they ran away instead?"  
"Well, I guess so. Not because of me though....Estelle never loved me. Thank god really, because it would have ended horribly......for all concerned......not my finest hour!"  
"It's sad that people let us down, Ronnie, our lives suck sometimes."  
"Clara.....I know you miss your Doctor, you get that far away look in your eyes sometimes, and I know you're thinking about him."  
"Oh, Ronnie....I'm so sorry. I need to forget about him, he's not coming back. Ever. And I've got you, and you are wonderful, and I love you!"  
He was silent for a moment, digesting her words.  
Did she just say the L word?  
"Do you mean it Clara? Truly? You love stupid, ridiculous, crazy Pilfrey?"  
"Yes.....I'm afraid I do. Silly idiot!"  
"Because, I love you desperately, passionately, completely and utterly, and I'd go to the very ends of the Earth if you wanted me too......do you know that?"  
"Well, I do now!! Oh, Ronnie.....we're good together aren't we? We're both nuts, in lots of ways......I'm a complete control freak, you border on the manic......and we rub along so well, don't we?"  
"We do Clara......we do! I'm a happy Pilfrey when I'm with you!"  
"Then let's do something.....something mad, something meaningful. Let's put the past behind us and go forwards together, and make a difference in the world."

oOo

Clara loved the night time here.  
The searing heat of the day, cooled with the nightfall.  
Strange sounds filled the air.  
Cicadas.  
Trumpeting of elephants from the nearby game reserve.  
The singing of the local tribespeople as they gathered in the tiny church on a Sunday evening.  
Sounds that only Africa can conjure.  
They worked for Oxfam, he as a Doctor in the concrete block built local hospital.  
No lucrative pharmaceutical company deals here, here a human life had little value, where a child could die for want of a vaccine costing 50p.  
She helping as part of an aid project to set up and teach in the village school.  
Each morning, instead of sullen teenagers with an overdose of sugar in their bloodstreams, she beheld a sea of eager smiling faces, willing to learn, eager for all she could teach them, keen to change the fortune that the circumstances of their lives had dealt them.  
Now, when she looked up into the inky blackness of the African night sky, studded with a trillion stars, she saw them, not as places she might visit, but as a dream she might wish upon, that might just come true.  
Curled together, in the slatted bed, under the mosquito net in their little wooden house, Clara realised that, although she had so much with the Doctor, here, with Ronnie, she had even more.  
She never laid by the Doctor's side, he never held her close and spoke to her in the still of the night, whispering terms of endearment, sweet protestations of love.  
They never made love with such passion, as she and Ronnie did.  
He may have been able to show her wonders, but it was no substitute for human companionship, love and fulfilment, and that was what she'd found now.

They'd given themselves a year.  
It changed both their lives, for the better.  
They did some good.  
Drew them ever closer together  
They moved on.  
Became whole.  
Loved each other, and found new happiness. 

oOo

So here he was, in the coffee shop, sipping his cappuccino, waiting for her to arrive.  
In she came, in a flurry of Autumn leaves , pink and breathless from running.  
"Hello, Ronnie darling! Sorry I'm late!"  
She bent and kissed him.....not a peck, but a full blown, no holds barred, snog.  
Other customers stared, open mouthed.  
His eyes closed, lips parted, a flush in his cheeks.  
"Gosh.....Clara!" He breathed.  
He was in so deep.  
How could he not be?  
"Good day?" He asked, trying his best to sound unflustered, and feeling anything but.  
"It was okay.....a bunch of essays to mark, a test on Pride and Prejudice with my Year Ten's, and Graham Tompkins had a nose bleed.........you?"  
"Not bad, one diabetic, an athletes foot, three cases of influenza and some genital warts."  
Clara scrunched up her nose, in mock disgust.  
"Well, I hope you wore gloves!" She remarked.  
Their gales of laughter met and mingled.


End file.
